We left O.R. International Airport (at seven thirty) in a Renault built for five but packed with six, we got pulled over by a cop, paid off his colleague (with the contents of Matthew’s wallet), and said things like “Welcome to Joburg, hey” and “did you just bribe that policeman, Matthew?”
The Sandton CBD is like a new utopian Ratanga Junction. Immediately outside are the two towers of Nelson Mandela Square, a fortress surrounded by exotic plants and hanging gardens. The hyperreality of Sandton in combination with the maze-like quality of the art fair makes me feel like I’m watching an art themed version of The Sims play out.
The Fair is a grid made up of segments. There’s a segment devoted to some sort of High Curio, a segment standing as testament to either bad delegation or intensive conceptualism, a segment that’s already neatly set up and ready with a gallery bro looking really fucking smug, and a large majority of segments looking like miniaturized versions of how they normally do.
In the vein of consumption, a champagne bar within a gallery space (which might actually be a strangely decorated lounge area) has been erected, as well as a restaurant in the center of the fair, amongst some of the better-known South African galleries. Their menu has been mounted to the drywall.
I’m going to push this Sims metaphor a tiny bit and say that we arrived when the Fair was in the Create-a-Style phase. We’re relaxed, sitting on benches, waiting for someone to start selling us coffee, unable to tell the time of day. The combination of iphone alerts and ambient music creates an eerie slot machine hum. Throughout the course of the day The Sims: Art Stories has turned into The Sims: Art Casino Nightmare.
There are a lot of ladders, spirit-levels, wet-wipes, assistants saying ‘How about this?’ Gallery Bosses saying ‘No’, an image of Julia Rosa Clark’s boobs which none of us can tie to a gallery, a vague impression of Barend de Wett looking at the rogue image of Julia’s boobs, which all of us find disturbing.
This all emphasizes the fact that the preparatory tends to trump the product. It seems to be agreed upon that a squatting artist ruffling up a sculpture’s skirt or retouching a charcoal drawing is perhaps more interesting than the final products produced through said process.
The fun of arriving early is that Joburg Art Fair is a charming mess when it’s trying to pull itself together. Nothing looks anything like the catalogue, everything’s covered in bubble wrap and smudges, precarious and surrounded by nervous artists on their knees trying to get pieces to stick to each other so they can be taken seriously. Joburg Art Fair in a preparatory state is an enjoyable symphony of several hundred lanyards swinging frantically to the tune of ‘Fuck, this art won’t mount.’